Dining Room

I cleaned up the dining room while the kids made crafts with their crafts kit. I didn’t take any pictures because Desmond got frustrated and angry and ultimately I had to send him to his room because he was throwing and kicking things. Also sarcasm.

There’s no good books for middlers about frustration tolerance. Not, at least, that I can find. Nothing that would interest Desmond.

We’ve tried a lot of things, and he has gotten much better over the years, but sometimes, he still struggles. Not at school, though. Only at home.

I get why that is. He’s comfortable at home. In his crisis state, he’s going to revert to his default behaviors. We all do, I guess. For me, it’s negativity and self-deprecation.

I try to help him through it by staying calm and not raising my own voice, and giving him alternatives:

“Sometimes something might not work one way. Can you try it another way?”

“You need to let the glue dry all the way before you remove the tape.”

But it was too late. He was already escalated, and ripping the tape off the popsicle sticks, and, of course, they fell apart.

Desmond is very black and white. He’s a good problem solver in math, but not with fine motor tasks. There’s one way to do it, and if it doesn’t work, he loses his sh—.

He also didn’t believe he should need any help with this particular task, which complicated the situation.

Looking at the craft, I could see just from my own experience that his method of choice was not going to work, and I tried to get him to try it a different way, but he was already beyond that point. More frustration=less flexibility.

I haven’t eaten anything since 11:45, and now I’m realizing I’m starving! Time to eat.